Who Does What, When:

aligning content stakeholders with clear roles and responsibilities

Presented by: Blaine Kyllo, Content Strategist at Content Strategy Inc

Contributed by: Maxine Kobinski, Student at the University of Minnesota

Overview

In his presentation, Blaine Kyllo equates content ownership to an orchestral performance. The composer created the music, but the orchestra has individual performers working together and a conductor keeping them in time. He asks "Who owns what?", and how is it coordinated? Brian Kyllo opens with

Who cares? Your audiences, your users, don't really care who owns it.

Kyllo asserts that identifying a content owner in your organization is a "fool's errand"

In an organization, noone can agree on who the owner is, and there will always be disagreements. The best way to define ownership is that the company owns the content, and different aspects of content are coordinated into the final product.

Kyllo reveals that a great way of defining that coordination of effort to create, distribute, and manage content is through a RACI chart (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed), which defines the level of engagement one has for each task going into content creation. When each role and task is defined, each member of the Orchestra knows their part, and when to come in so that they are in sync with their team. Though the tool is not meant to point out breaks in role ownership, creating a RACI chart for a product such as a website, book, magazine, etc. can show where you need to implement communication strategies between positions with the same role in the chart, or show that there may be someone missing that should be Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed.

To learn more about how to create a RACI chart, [click here] (https://racichart.org/)

Key Takeaways

Kyllo identifies a best practice for each letter of the RACI acronym. * Responsibility: * "One or more people need to be responsible for doing the work" * Accountability: * "Only one person is accountable, and there should always be one A for each task * Consulted: * "Several team members may be consulted. This is two-way communication * Informed: * "Several team members may be informed. Communication is one-way.

These best practices act as guidelines to identify and create RACI charts for your teams/organizations. The definition of each letter of the acronym can give employees their personal sheet music to know when and where to come in to produce the final product (webpage, book, magazine, etc.).

Reflection

I believe that this presentation reflects how things have gone with group work in the class so far instinctually. Professor Card mentioned in one of his weekly videos that the groups that tended to do better at their proposal projects were ones where a "Project Manager" type-role made role definitions clear and goals for the next deliverable. This RACI tool could be used in lieu of a project manager for any future group projects, to identify each deliverable of a project and separate out work fairly between each member of the group.

Overall, I am excited to see how this could be useful both in class and in my current work environment, especially since the move to the work from home life can confuse a lot of role ownership due to the ease of proximity no longer naturally revealing roles for final products.